Monday, January 5, 2015

Lookin' Fresh

She was in fact not. Fresh. At all. Back to basics in our Saturday lesson.....walk to trot transitions. Emma is mostly a genius and sometimes I wonder if I have any thought in my brain at all.

The few times I managed to get out and ride Ellie in the evening has been, frankly, a dismal failure. She flings her head about (what you saw in the beginning of the video? It's not just reserved for play time) and I worry that she's uncomfortable, that she's going to buck me off, or a combination of the two.

Not so friends. She is just trying to get out of work as illustrated when we did 15 walk steps, 15 trot steps, and continued to pare that down to 5 and 5. At the start of the sequence she would fling and we would ignore while giving her a boot with the spur and carrying onward. By the end she would merrily bounce into her trot without batting an eye.

When we repeated this exercise on Sunday morning she spent less time flipping me the bird and more time trotting forward, albeit sort of grudgingly. I'll take it.

ooh i like that exercise of 15 walk 15 trot then moving it down to 5 and 5... i've done 10 and 10 repeatedly to try and establish brakes, but i like your variation better for transition work. good luck and hope your persistence pays off!